ya the section you speak of is called waterboxer/oxyboxer forums. reason i choose the wbx motor was buy reading the forum one night. i had just completed a type4 2.0 motor in my old white super and i was very disappointed with the power and how its very hard to buy anything for a type4 motor thats made to fit into a beetle. so i looked into the wbx motor. after about 4 hrs reading i knew that was my next step. dont read into the " oh the head gaskets are junk" its all a myth. ive never had a issue, and i have used the newer plain jane green coolant with ZERO side effects, but now im running dex-a-cool just cause id try it. their great motors. i wanted to build my car kinda as if vw where to build a watercooled vw. my car for the most part remains stock looking even after all the radiator/ coolant pipes installed. i will admit tho...a suby swap probably is better for simply the better parts availability. but to put in a wbx motor into a type1 trans is just a simple flywheel swap. any type1 exhaust header will almost bolt on, sames goes for valve covers, pushrod tubes, alternator/ stand, even intakes bolt on. i even used cb performance fuel rails and they even worked with the injector spacing. so i like the wbx cause its the underdog motor that i personally think that if it was put into the beetles, the motor would be far better appreciated.

wow i didnt know about that classic car adventures right in my state....ill be seriously looking into it. looks and sounds like a great time. i hope they dont mind having beetles cruise along tho. i know it said pre 79' cars, i just hope they are not specific on the type of car. good luck man on your build.

When I first saw a WBX motor pulled down the thought struck me that some VW engineers had been reading hot VWs magazine, good size intake ports, good stroke & bore with room for more, dual valve springs, lots of Type 1 hot up bits bolt on, they even run dual thrust on the cam bearings

Spannermanager ( member on here ) is a big fan of the wbx motor he is a very helpful and knowledgable with lots of real world experience with tuned VW's.Despite all this experience he is still very accommodating bloke and understanding to novices like me and does not have his head up is arse like some bods I've met.His emphasis on keeping things simple,making the car lighter and improving it's aerodynamics really does make a lot of sense.

Spannermanager ( member on here ) is a big fan of the wbx motor he is a very helpful and knowledgable with lots of real world experience with tuned VW's.Despite all this experience he is still very accommodating bloke and understanding to novices like me and does not have his head up is arse like some bods I've met.His emphasis on keeping things simple,making the car lighter and improving it's aerodynamics really does make a lot of sense.

I love the rally build, and more than that I love that it's driven/raced. I think you're a meticulous builder, so whatever you put together will be worth the watch.

As for the next project, I'm partial to the 1303, the curved windshield, the dash/interior, and the later 2 bolt strut suspension. I've build more than a few 1302 and 1303 cars, one of them twice, and the 1303 just has the baby-911 look to me. I've done type 4, mild or hot n/a and turbo type 1, and now subaru power plants. The n/a aircooled motors have a sound (one you know well I'm sure ) that gets more intoxicating the bigger the motor you build, but the ease of power and the reliability of the subaru motors has a siren song that's hard to ignore.

For a long time I didn't buy into the idea that "the aircooled motor is the sound and soul of a beetle". It's just hyperbole. Then I got a GSR, resto-modded it, and it seemed like a sin to put anything but a type 1 into it. It's a monster engine, but still a type 1, so maybe there's something to that idea after all.

If you want a german look bug, distill the basic principles and look at every piece through that lens.
-Simple in looks and operation
-Form follows function
-Nothing without purpose
-Technology without complexity

The n/a aircooled motors have a sound (one you know well I'm sure ) that gets more intoxicating the bigger the motor you build, but the ease of power and the reliability of the subaru motors has a siren song that's hard to ignore.

The right muffler setup will get a subi sounding just a like a VW.

Mine from inside just sounds like a VW engine with IDAs, from the outside some mistake it as a hot VW engine, a mate had an EJ22 in an early split with a header hooked up to a side winders muffler.
Most people were shocked when you opened the hatch and it wasnt a VW engine sounded like one just without all the valve train noise.

That pretty much nails exactly what my are. Now I just need to start budgeting some time and space for it. The Audi Coupe quattro project is nearing completion. I need to figure out some t-fittings to use in the vacuum/boost lines, sort out the plumbing from intercooler to throttle body and whip up some fuel and oil lines. Then it *should* start. (ha! we all know what that's like.)

Having read a whole lot on the WBX motors, I'm less excited about them than I was. I think if you're trying to stay within the VW family, it makes perfect sense. On a cost per hp scale, however, I think it's almost 50/50 with the Subaru setup. For someone like me, with a Subaru factory team 2min from my house, it certainly sways towards the Subaru side of things. I think two years ago I would have argued that a 'proper' German Look should be Porsche or VW powered. But now that I have a very nice, very fun, VW powered machine...I'm game for trying other things. Ultimately, however, it's going to be one of the shop guys at the Subaru team who decides for me. He'll be pulling his well-cared for 2.5RS motor out of his car around Easter and putting it up for sale. I know exactly how much I have into my 2110, can guess what a WBX setup is going to cost me. Thus, the sale price of his motor will pretty much pick whether or not Subaru is an option or not. Just wish I had thought to buy his transmission for $300 before christmas...

If you are going for a GT car, to drive on the street, Maybe a type 3 or type 4?

Unlike a race-inspired car, which suits the small/light beetle form factor so well,
A street/touring type of car might be better suited to something bigger?
It's nice to get the windshield out of your face regardless...

Loved your rally build, and the pics/write-up.
Looking forward to seeing this here!

Can't wait to see what come's of this..
My 2 cent go with the EJ25 with the rally team 2 mins from you and whats available in the aftermarket I think that's the best route and the one I will be going with for my next build.. love to stay Aircooled but it just seems right to go Subie for a D.D GL in my eyes anyways.

So it's been a few months, the 1958 beetle is up and running (without a finished interior) and I've been enjoying it as my daily driver. Kinda nice to get in a car, turn the key and drive off without waiting to heat up 10L of oil! Haven't stopped thinking about my Germanlook bug though, though I have realized it's going to be a much slower project then the rally bug. I probably should have built the GL first, and THEN gone self-employed :P

A friend of mine recently rolled his bug-eye Imprezza rally car, which meant buying a donor car for all the panels he mucked up. Once the bodyshop was done with it, there was a small problem of "what to do with the rest?" So, here it is parked in my garage:

Up front is a SOHC EJ25, of which I really know little about. We have service records for the engine, and I'll be doing a full rebuild anyways, but what I mean is I have little specific Subaru knowledge about this particular motor. Part of me is thinking I should have held out for a turbo, part of me is loving the fact that the GL won't end up light-years more powerful than my Rally Bug. One of my big worries about building another fun car is that my Rally Bug just ends up sitting in the garage because the other car is 'so much better'. Regardless, for now I'm just popping the motor, harness and ECU out of this car and sliding them aside in the shop. It will likely end up being my final engine choice, but it's not guaranteed to be the final engine choice. I haven't even begun to search around at the rally shop to see what parts they are no longer using, that might be added to this. I'm also going to be tearing it down to the block and rebuilding it (just to be sure), so I'll look into cams and compression options for some 'light' performance increases.

Presuming, at this stage, that I'm going to continue with the Subaru motor I've started thinking about the transmission. The donor car is an Automatic, which means I'll be on the hunt for a transmission donor. At this stage the most likely option is a Subaru 5spd, and probably using Subagears parts to make it all fit. The guys at the rally shop around the corner have worked out an absolutely awesome sequential gearbox along with Quaife, but unfortunately those things aren't really daily-driver compatible :P With the number of miles I put on a car in a year, I'd be rebuilding the trans weekly! We've been joking around for the last week about building a tube-frame chassis, so that I can build the car mid-engine. I'd say chances of actually going this route are slim-to-nil, but the idea keeps coming up! A good friend recently bought a tube bender for the race truck he's building, so a tube-frame car is a natural progression once that is done.

Lastly, radiator placement. I'm still hung up on getting them in the back of the car and not cutting up the sheet metal up-front. I know how I'll do the visuals in the rear for airflow so that I'm happy...but I'm also aware that everyone who's done it before has eventually moved the radiators up front. In that regard, I'm hoping I have a bit of an upper-hand. For the last couple of years I've been working on the video crew for a racing team, which uses rear-mounted radiators. I've had the opportunity to share my project and issues with one of the engineers, and we've worked out the basic parameters he thinks I need to hit to make it successful. I'm beginning to think I might buy a rust-bucket test car to cut up and test on before I commit to building my GL with the rad in the rear...we'll see.

I know you have good fab skills so this may not be an issue for you, but you might want to look into sourcing a set of EJ22 heads. They're quite a bit narrower than the heads currently on your engine (in relative terms) and therefore require less metal to be removed from the car to allow the engine to fit. They don't gimp the engine too much so you're looking somewhere betwixt 155-170 hp.

A WRX gearbox is the ideal solution, however, a VERY slightly beefed up type 1 gearbox would handle the power without issue, though, you'd have to have and adapter et al, for fitment.

Lotta resources for this swap, as I'm sure you're aware, so you should have no major issues. Joel's knowledge is worth it's weight in gold so he's a good guy to fire off questions to.

Dont believe all of the bad press that the WBX motors get, most of it is from improperly cared for motors, a properly built motor running factory coolant and de mineralised water and you would never have the issues that uncared for motors have.